Alibaba puts $4.63 bil­lion into elec­tron­ics re­tailer

Alibabab Group Ltd said it would in­vest more than 28 bil­lion yuan ($4.63 bil­lion) for a nearly 20 per­cent stake in elec­tron­ics re­tailer Sun­ing Com­merce Group Ltd, a bricks-and-mor­tar re­tail chain which once strug­gled to cope with Chi­nese con­sumers shift­ing to the In­ter­net.

Alibaba will be­come Sun­ing’s sec­ond-largest share holder af­ter the aqui­si­tion. In re­turn, Sun­ing would ac­quire up to 14 bil­lion yuan in newly is­sued Alibaba shares, giv­ing it about a 1.1 per­cent stake in the e-com­merce com­pany.

Un­der the part­ner­ship, Sun­ing will open a flag­ship store selling con­sumer elec­tron­ics, home ap­pli­ances and baby prod­ucts on Alibaba’s brand-fo­cused Tmall. com plat­form, the com­pa­nies said. They will also look for ways to com­bine Sun­ing’s more than 1,600 phys­i­cal stores with the ser­vices Alibaba and its af­fil­i­ates can pro­vide on mo­bile apps, such as or­der­ing and pay­ments.